CPS
by WitchWolf
Summary: They are pale. They are shuddering. They’re out of character and out of their minds as well. They are the “romantic interests” and in bad need of an aspirin. And we provide. Welcome to the CPS – the Character Protection Society.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **We own nothing save our wicked little brains and a bit too much time on our hands; no one's yet been able to put a copyright on that.

**A/N:** This is a collaboration between Wolf-Kin and yours truly. We were bored. We also can't stand badfics. And we are particularly fed up with cliché romance badfics. We also believe that _characters themselves_ are even more fed up with it then we are but poor sods can hardly do a thing about it. Thus, the Character Protection Society was born.

The prologue and the first chapter might be considered relatively… tame, so to speak. Later on… if you happen to suspect via subtle and not so subtle hints that it is _your_ story that gets picked apart, chances are you're probably right.

Reviews are public. Therefore, review replies will also be public. We will answer them at Shadows Unabated forum (you can find it among NWN forums or via my profile page) Both flames and laughs are more than welcome. We aim for the latter; we really won't mind the former. Above all, we hope you'll have some fun either way. ;)

There is some humor, there's lots of parody; in reality, it is a tragedy.

* * *

**Character Protection Society**

**Prologue**

**(by Wolf-Kin)****  
**

"…And I just feel so…so…" the tiefling warrior searched in the air above his head for the correct word; across the small coffee table in front of his couch, his githzerai therapist – _zerth_, actually, the githzerai approximate equivalent to a priest – waited in patient silence, expression unreadable behind her veil. "I feel_helpless_," he finally decided. "Forced to always be something that I am not, forced to feel what I don't feel…I cannot _fight_ them, cannot even refuse to love them. At times, it is like…like only _watching_ myself obey the commands she gives me; like a golem I must obey, but my mind is free to watch as my body goes through the motions."

He sighed, and bowed his head, staring down at the coffee table. "And what's worse is that no sooner than I am freed from one, then I am sucked into another!" His sharp blue eyes were bleak with despair as he looked up at the _zerth_. "They all feel the same, lady," he whispered. "It is like an endless cycle, always repeating the same horrors. I feel that I will never be free of them."

At last, the planar spoke, her voice calm and soothing as she addressed him, "_Know_ that you _will_ taste freedom from them. _Know_ it deep in your heart, so fully that there are no doubts, and it will be so."

"I _am_ a planar," he reminded her with a hint of his old fire. "I know the power of belief."

"But you do not yet _know_ the power of doubt. And you do not_know_ that freedom is in your grasp; you are as my People were under the illithids, before Gith rose to give us the _knowing_ of rebellion and freedom. A fair analogy," she continued, just a hint of censure in her voice, "for as we did not _know_ any hope of freedom, so do you now. But we _did_ _know_ freedom, as, in time, so shall you."

"But…"

"No," she said, voice firm now. "Doubts create holes in the wall, and thus bring the fortress down. There can be no doubts in your mind: you _will_ be freed. _Know_ this, hold it to your heart, and it _will_ be."

Before the scarred warrior could answer, there came a quiet tap on the door, and the _zerth's_ secretary stuck her head into the room, mousey tousled hair more rumpled than usual, a sign of agitation. "Ms. Zhjaeve – " the title wasn't particularly correct, but the secretary didn't seem to care, considering that she'd actually learned to pronounce her mistress's name – "They've returned."

"Ah." Graceful as any of her race, Zhjaeve stood and gestured to the tiefling. "Here I must leave you for today: contemplate these truths and let them fill you, until you _know_ them, until even the shadows of doubt are cast from you – especially the shadows of doubt, for they can be the most dangerous. There is a room prepared for you, just down the hall, if you care to rest."

He nodded as he stood; there was a certain grace to his movements as well, kin to Zhjaeve's but not quite the same. She moved like a piece of silk ripping in the wind, all fluid dancer, even the smallest move beautiful to watch; he moved like a warrior, every move precise, nothing wasted, nothing extraneous. Catlike and deadly, even and perhaps especially in armor, it was occasionally hard to believe that this same man had been coming in for extensive mental and emotional therapy for several years now.

And so it wasn't surprising that he hesitated, the wary look of a hunted rabbit flickering into his eyes. "Do you really think I'll have time to rest?" he asked bluntly. Memories of being dragged back here, shaking, after one, being quickly stabilized and returned to himself, only just in time before he was sucked into another, clawed at his mind.

Zhjaeve smiled…though he couldn't quite say how he knew, given the veil over her mouth, but there was certainly fond warmth in her voice as she told him, "It is too soon to _know_, but I believe you will be given a small reprieve from the usual wheel – a new cycle has begun, and so they have latched onto two new pets. Perhaps now we can make true progress with you."

He bowed, grateful for her reassurance, and turned to head towards the door, leaving her by the fireplace. He had to admit, this wasn't a bad place to spend considerable about of time in; it did manage to radiate a healing aura, subtler than the fireplace radiated heat. Half-office, half-sitting room, the place was about as comfortable as it looked, especially in the morning and evening, when light streamed in through the windows, and with the windows, through the bright stained glass suncatchers. The fireplace along one wall with its intimate setting of low coffee table between the opposing couch and wing-backed chair counterbalanced the more formal desk and chairs on the other wall, and "sessions" were just as likely to take place in either arrangement.

He was just reaching for the handle when the door flew open of its own accord, an odd trio framed on the threshold. Two women flanked a taller man with a wild look in his eyes; each of the women held an arm, obviously half-steering, half-dragging him where they wanted him to go. Probably for good reason; he recognized the frantic look, the shaking, the _fear_, and his sympathies went out the stranger – obviously, here was one of the new "pets" Zhjaeve had spoken of.

One of the women – dressed in skintight brown wools – seemed to be keeping up a one-sided conversation in an attempt to reassure the man in question. "…two of you, so they'll split over who to pursue and you'll only have to deal with half of them. Granted, that's still a considerable number, but at least you _might_ get some consecutive sessions in, unlike poor Valen, who kept having to turn around right after – oh, speak of the tanar'ri!" she, having just noticed him, grinned up at him and gave him a fond wave. "Good to see you again, Valen! You're looking better than I've seen you in _years_."

He bowed to her and her partner; a complex tangle of emotions always rose up within him at the sight of the pair. He was, of course, always grateful to them for pulling him out of the stories; at the end of every plotline, when he got to return to himself and thus was a shaking wreck, they literally pulled him _here_. But of course, there was always the vague embarrassment that they _had_ seen him as such a wreck, that anyone had, and the residual memories of particularly bad stories that the very sight of them triggered…

Still, the fact that they _did_ rescue him, occasionally not even waiting until the story was complete before pulling him out, could not be denied; and he _did_ like them, on the whole…

"I do feel…better," he admitted. "Perhaps in time…" he trailed off, recognizing the fragile hope that had been planted.

"Ah." Zhjaeve had come up behind him, her attention focused on the women's companion. "I had feared it would be you first, Bishop. _Know_ that I shall do all in my power to help you through these dark times."

"Zhjaeve?" the man's voice was soft and shaky in disbelief. "Normal? Not…" his eyes roved around the room, looking for hidden foes – or worse, _lusters_. Somewhat convinced of its relative safety, he shook off his escorts – they were too willing to let him – and took a few more steps towards the githzerai, legs as shaky as a colt's. Behind him trailed his wolf companion, looking as whipped as he did; _that_ was different. Valen raised an eyebrow, and the woman silently shook her head, smile fading: no, he probably _didn't_ want to know, all things considered.

"Love interests" were bad. Love interests with pets were worse.

"_Know_ that this first session is the hardest of them all," Zhjaeve announced to the company at large, words directed not to Bishop, but the women.

"That would be our cue," the other woman who'd been silent up until now informed her companion.

"Yeah, call up the next one… Oh!" She raised her fist to her forehead as the three of them exited the room, as if to knock sense into her. "Almost forgot – Valen, the Seer wants to speak with you as soon as possible. And while you're there, could you give her this for me?" She dug in her pouches, and came up with a folded piece of parchment, the flaps secured with a misshapen blob of wax. "Just a 'thank-you' for that tea-set she enchanted for me; I can have a hot cup of tea wherever I am within minutes!"

Valen grinned as he took the letter and pocketed it: her obsession with tea was legendary throughout this branch of the CPS. Then again, seeing as the department only had the two agents, the overworked secretary, Zhjaeve, the Seer, and whichever characters were currently staying here, that wasn't that hard to do. No one was quite sure if the small category was a blessing or a curse – they all knew each other, unlike the massive Harry Potter branch of the CPS, but there were _only_ those two agents to handle bringing in the various characters. On the other hand, it was generally a very small rotation of characters.

"Oh, _no_, look at this…"

She leaned over to read the tiny display screen of her partner's wrist-mounted computer, which generally only worked long enough to get them their next assignment. She gave a low whistle. "Well, now…" she trailed off miserably, then gave a small wave to Valen as their paths parted; the Seer's quarters were just down the hall, and they were heading down the staircase to the Portal Room. "Duty calls. See you around."

The tiefling just had time to call his own farewells, and then they were gone down the stairs. He shook his head to himself, and continued on his own way: just another day in the Character Protection Society…


	2. Companion For A Day

**Companion For A Day, Romantic Interest For A Lifetime... and beyond  
**

**(by WitchWolf) **

A dark-haired ranger looked at the bottom of his mug. Few more drinks, and the mug would likely return the stare. He was looking forward to it. If he was going to have to go through yet another round of _that_ –and there was no doubt in his tortured mind that he will be forced to do so very soon- than at least he could do it drunk. It wouldn't make it any more bearable of course, but he fervently hoped it would at least make him pass out half way through it and snore though the rest in blissful, drunken ignorance. Sadly, according to the man across him, that never worked.

Now, "trust" wasn't one of the common words in Bishop's dictionary, but in this particular case, the other man had his complete trust and, uncharacteristically for the sour ranger, even a tinge of sympathy. After all, the poor bloke had been in this mess for far longer than he.

"Four years you say…" his voice trailed off in some sort of amazed horror.

The other man nodded sullenly, swirling whatever liquid he had in his own mug (Abyssal Schnapps, as he later explained, was courtesy of the local CPS staff member with a really soft heart and really hard contacts in the lower planes).

"More or less," he said and quickly downed his drink in one gulp as a sort of punctuation; as if the words themselves tasted foul in his mouth and he was hoping to wipe the taste off with something even fouler. If even Abyssal Finest could possibly taste fouler than _that_.

"How…?" the ranger looked at him with near-desperate expression, his voice barely a above a whisper.

The tiefling shook his head and waved a hand in general direction of the bar: a heavy old thing that had probably seen (and likely, been used in) more bar brawls than the tiefling and the ranger put together; it had its own collection of blotches and stains, some of which probably counted as mini-primordial soups by now. It also sported an assortment of relatively clean mugs, a not-so-clean bar-cloth and, at the other end of the last item listed, a definitely tired-looking CPS staff member who was, at the time, industriously pouring her own daily dose of sanity down her throat.

Seeing Valen's gesture and misinterpreting it as a request for more drink, she leaned over the bar, wrapped her fingers around the first bottle-like thing she found and in one fluid movement sent it flying towards their table. The "fluidness" of the movement generally consisted of fine line of unidentified fluid pouring out of the uncorked end during the brief flight, but since most of the contents were still inside at the end of the trip and the bottle had the decency not to break even after both Valen and Bishop failed to catch it, neither of the men complained.

"Elves, mostly…" the tiefling slurred, "Half-elves, an odd human or two…" He democratically split the remaining contents of the bottle between the two mugs, not really bothering to check if they were yet empty or not. "But no dwarves. Definitely no dwarves." He smiled apologetically at the dwarf female who had just delivered the bottle. "No offence meant, my lady-Ugh!" He bit his tongue, but not fast enough. He growled in frustration. The damned line was by now carved so deeply into his vocal routine he wondered how long it would be before he addressed even Bishop as "My Lady". He shuddered at the notion. Well, at least he could keep enough presence of mind not to start with "Yes, my love?" again. Or at least, he hoped so. Desperately.

The dwarf chuckled and gave both men a tired grin. "None taken, hon. We all know how dwarves, gnomes and hobbits –let alone half-orcs- are just not… " she said the next word with disgust, "…_pretty_ enough to make it into those kinds of stories. Certainly, not as lead characters and I, for one, am grateful to whatever powers there are that that is so." And she meant it, too – she'd have taken it a personal insult to all dwarvenkind if she ever ran across one of her kin in _that_ embarrassing a role.

"It's not that I mind any of it," Valen informed the world in general, "I am a _plana_r for Abyss' sake! What do _I_ care for aesthetic standards of some backwater Prime? Bah…" He took a swig from his new-filled mug and tried not to choke too hard. Abyssal Schnapps was an acquired taste, but with the addition of whatever he just poured into it, the taste suddenly became reminiscent of something one could use to unclog a goblin drainage ditch.

Across the table, Bishop bravely swallowed from his own mug and nodded, but not too hard in case his head decided to unscrew itself and take the rest of the night off.

"Elves and half-elves. Yeah, that seems to be my lot, too," he grumbled, then squeezed his eyes shut, trying to deflect the onslaught of images –all of them invariably of pretty elfin girls he wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole when sober or a wet bar cloth when drunk but desperately wished to plant at least three arrows through their backs, drunk _or_ sober. At this point, the sight of a _dwarf woman _ at the bar looked almost serene.

"And they're all rangers, dammit!" he hissed angrily. "Unless they're bards, of course. Or," and there was a particularly nasty streak of venom in his voice now, "_paladins,"_ he spat. "As if one weren't enough already," he finished, poking his thumb over the shoulder towards a small and remarkably clean tavern table where one solemn figure silently drank, prayed, or both.

"Shut up, Bishop." The voice was quiet and deep and in any other circumstance involving it's owner and a certain ranger it would have sounded threatening, too. This time though, it sounded more like the words came out of habit than out of anything else. Except, possibly, out of one very tired paladin's throat. Strangely enough, not drunk as well. At the far side of the bar, the dwarf grinned.

_Paladins,_ she thought, though unlike the ranger, she never put the annoying accent on the first syllable of the word. After having spent a good chunk of her life under the same roof with one, Dorna learned a thing or two about them and overall, developed a rather low opinion of the lot. Having spent some time around Casavir, she begun thinking that perhaps not _all_ of them were _as_ bad, or at least that Casavir wasn't. if nothing else, the man could hold down his drink.

Paladins, by the very nature of their calling, tended to be lawful, orderly and generally sober. The trick to being all those things at once and still retain some semblance of sanity was to develop a good stomach for drink early on in the career. She learned that a while ago, after waking up under the table, wondering what in the Nine Hells was going on and where did the top of her head go, only to find the table full of neatly stacked empty mugs and the paladin she was planning to outdrink several hours ago already gone.

Chuckling to herself, she poured another one and turned her attention back to the ongoing conversation.

"Paladins, nothing," Casavir scoffed, his face a mixture of agitation and downright disgust. He half-turned in his chair and, leaning on his elbow, looked over his shoulder at two other men. "If _they_ are paladins, so is Bishop."

Bishop made a grunting noise that indicated that he was: 1) disgusted at the mere suggestion, 2) was going to pound Casavir to the ground one of these days for that remark… if he could be bothered to do so, but that 3) he generally agreed with the statement. It was amazing how much could that man say in just one grunt.

Valen's eyes flickered from one man to another and he, too, nodded his agreement on the subject at hand. If _they_ claimed to be paladins, it was invariably the sort that was slightly tomboyish, a bit (or a lot) prankier than any paladin was expected to be and with a particular "bright-pink-over-blind-eyes" outlook on the world that no paladin worth his salt ever had. Not unless he was blind, deaf and dead, anyway. There was no rule that said paladins, too, couldn't crack jokes but he felt there bloody well should be a rule forbidding them to be complete idiots.

The tiefling looked at Bishop for a moment. There was no force in the world that would ever convince _him_ that "paladin" wasn't a synonym for "idiot" to begin with but even Bishop agreed on one occasion that there were paladins and then there were _paladins._ Casavir was the real item – in Bishop's eyes, something he could genuinely hate on simple basis that he was his exact opposite. But the kind of paladins these three men had to deal with most of the time…

Valen sighed. Trying to decide if it was Casavir or Bishop who had it worse with _that_sort of 'paladin' was probably the sort of mental gymnastics better left for times in which he didn't have half a keg of Abyssal readying another tidal wave over his brain.

"Strange, though," the tiefling mused, "I think I only had one Weaponmaster to deal with in all this time and that one wasn't actually bad at all."

_Lucky fucker_, he heard Bishop mutter.

"Well, at least there's two of you," Valen waved his mug at them carelessly, sending few drops of Abyssal spraying on the table and the floor where they promptly sizzled and died in a puff of smoke. "I have to put up with all of them by myself."

The other two exchanged venomous glances that suggested they didn't see each other's company as that big of a blessing.

"It's still me who gets to take the brunt of it," the ranger sulked menacingly. Few weeks ago, he probably would have added something acidic as arrows along the lines of that at least proving once and for all who was a better looker (hells, better everything) of the two of them…but somehow, those words soon turned to be far more double edged then he liked.

"Better you than me," Casavir grinned in one of the rare displays of malice the paladin allowed himself occasionally. Bishop shot him a caustic glare, yet didn't reach for his bow to shoot something else at him as well. Just holding a mug and finding his lips with it two times out of three was enough to keep his hands fully occupied right now.

Valen looked at the pair oddly as a particularly unnerving thought wormed it's way through his brain. Being here longer than anyone else, he heard quite a few rumors from the staff, including those from Harry Potter section as well as those from the larger branch of Forgotten Realms section of which NWN was just a sub-branch. He didn't even want to _think_ about Harry Potter, and the FR branch seemed to have this assassin and this drow ranger hauled in so often the two begun considering the facility their second, if not their first home by now.

"Well," he begun reluctantly, "At least you two haven't been stuck in a…"

The two looked at him unblinkingly in a sort of befuddled horror: not sure what he was trying to say but sure as hell it bode nothing good for them. Valen bit his lip nervously, fishing for words.

"You know... that thing you get from knives and swords, only not _really_ knives and swords and you don't call it "cut" but that other word instead..." his voice trailed off as two men caught his unspoken thoughts and the look of sheer dread spread across their faces in unison.

"Aaaactually…" Dorna piped in from her corner and was immediately awarded with the sight of two hardened warriors about to whimper like week-old puppies. With a side order of arrow shower and a Smite Evil gratis. She usually didn't get her kicks out of disturbing this lot further than they already were, but she simply couldn't let this one slip past her.

"No, no, it's ok," she waved her hands at the shocked pair, having found some mercy in her heart after all. "From what I've seen, it's just a parody, so it's all right."

The two men relaxed visibly. It was true – parodies didn't count; they never claimed to be serious and in-character to begin with, so that made them quite bearable to be in. Occasionally.

The three men retreated to somber silence for a while, trying to drown out whatever dreadful images they've been left with after their latest torments. Only a few times, Valen had told the other two, had he been given a privilege of_not_ being forced to fall madly in love with the protagonist of the story. Once or twice, it happened that there were male leads on set and as far as he could remember they were, on the whole, all right. But that only came after a year or so and neither Casavir nor Bishop were certain at this point that they could ever hold out that long. But worse than that, they were scared shitless that they _would_. Valen, for his part, remembered the only instance in which the main was a female he was _not_ forced to court, and that one was, to put it bluntly, a homicidal maniac who could give even Bishop a run for his money; but even _that_ seemed a preferable option to the general trend of things.

"Well," Dorna said and jumped down from her chair, "That's it for me, guys. Gotta run – doing a double shift tonight." The men nodded and watched her go. Dorna had been a more recent addition to the CPS crew and actually worked only part-time for the NWN branch here. Right now, she was rotating shifts with another staff member from FR section and only popped down to "The Refuge" –as the tavern in the basement of CPS HQ was aptly named- on rare occasions she managed to take few hours off.

For the next fifteen minutes or so, the three men drank in silence, each suffused in their own private hells of nightmares past and nightmares yet to come. Until a grin approached them.

Like a Cheshire Cat inversed, only after a moment or two did the rest of the face materialize behind the grin as it's owner stealthily padded across the floor and towards the three near-neurotic heaps of misery.

"Well, well…" the grin's owner chuckled softly and leaned into the shadows and on the table behind him as three pairs of eyes met his own. "That bad, eh?" It was more a statement than a question.

"No. It's worse than that," Casavir muttered and turned his attention back to his drink, trying like hell to focus on seeing just one mug instead of two he was seeing in his hand but at the same time also trying to keep one weary, bleary eye trained on the newcomer. His effort merely caused his eyes to go cross, as he knew they would all along, but he just couldn't help himself: there was something in the very core of his paladin being that wouldn't allow him to take his eyes off any unsavory character in his vicinity even if he _knew_ they posed no threat to him or universe at large. At the moment, anyway.

"Gand," Valen shook his head, "What in the Nine Hells are _you_ doing down here?"

"Just dropped by for a quick drink," Aarin shrugged and, true to his statement, walked away and reached behind the counter in the same way Dorna had done some time ago. "And to see what state you sad lot are in," he added as he returned, his mug full of… whatever it was he had just helped himself to.

Valen squinted and shook his head again. Aarin Gand. During his first few months down here at CPS, Valen occasionally heard a rumor or three about some guy who preceded him but never really stayed around long. Based on what he had heard, the only mental picture Valen could possibly put together was that of a pathetic character with roguish tendencies, inclination to endlessly mope and whine about his dead-ex and overall is in possession of as much spine as could be found in an average invertebrate.

And like all mental pictures formed out of rumors alone, this one, too, proved to be completely wrong – a fact Valen was aware of the second he first laid his eyes on the black-skinned, dreadlocks-sporting man. Aarin Gand wasn't a_spymaster_ for nothing and among his many talents was a huge talent for disguise. And disguise, as Valen had soon been informed, was much more than wearing different clothes and fake moustache. It was wearing a fake _personality_ that really mattered in the job. And Aarin was damn good at it.

"Y'see," the spymaster had grinned at the distressed tiefling back when they first met, "It's simply a matter of making _them_ loathe _you_ instead of the other way around. You sit around, doing, to all appearances, nothing at all, and doing your damn best to look like a kicked puppy most of the time. Then you cook up some half-assed story about a dead-ex which may or may not be true, add some disgustingly mushy talk involving lots of words like 'lurve' and 'loss' and 'but _of course_ there's no _way_ I'm actually just trying to compensate for all that by courting you, no sir-e' and then just lay back and watch them scurry away like vermin from a sinking ship. And once you're sure they're well away from the deck, you just hoist the sails and bugger the hell out of there as fast as you can and get down to doing some real business instead."

It sounded so easy, the way Aarin had described it, but the thing was, you had to be _Aarin Gand_ in order to pull it off. Valen had tried it once or twice but it turned a total disaster so nowadays, he was just generally glad, and more than just generally jealous, that one of them, at least, managed to escape the clutches of nightmarish stories they were relentlessly being pushed into every second week or so.

"Oh, perk up, you lot," Aarin said cheerfully. "Look, I brought you some company." Something about the way the rogue said it made all three men look up in an instant. Gand said nothing more. Instead, he just put on one of his customary grins again and waved to the other figure that shuffled into the inn behind him to come over and join the party, sad as the party was.

The moment the other man stepped out into the light an entire collection of emotions ranging from sympathy to relief and back stirred through the tortured trio chests. Lean, yet muscular, exotic to the bone and with a patch of hair falling across one eye in a way that would instantly make any anime fangirl squeak for joy and then go have a cold shower and two runs around the block, the man approaching their table clearly had "The Next Victim" sign painted all over him.

"Gannayev. Gann-Of-Dreams," the newcomer said as the way of introduction and slid into the unoccupied chair next to Gand. "Expansion," he added with a faint smile.

"Oh." Bishop experienced a fleeting sense of knowing this guy from somewhere. "A… hagspawn?" he muttered before even realizing what he had said and drawing a curious glance from Valen for it. How he had known the newcomers species was as much of a mystery to him as it was to the tiefling.

"Yes. Nice to see you too, Bishop. …I guess," the hagspawn replied. "You _do_ look a bit better than the last time I saw you… " he frowned in slight puzzlement before adding "Or _will_ see you, at any rate." he finished uncertainly.

Bishop's eyes widened in barely suppressed horror. "You mean, I will be in…"

"No," Gann cut him short, "Not_exactly_. You _do_ get to show up, but you're dead already at the time. Stuck in the Wall of the Faithless," he added helpfully, "Being sucked in it and…"

"…not resisting it but in fact, enjoying every last damn moment of it," the two men finished in unison, one because he had seen it happen and the other riding the wave of pure hope: even in normal circumstances, Bishop would more-or-less welcome whatever oblivion had to offer in the end, but in _these_ circumstances, oblivion as the means of escape seemed the best thing that could possibly happen bar being _actually_ set free from it all without going through the inconvenience of dying first.

"Don't get your spirits up just yet," Gann waved a warning hand at the ranger. "Chances are, you'll be the first soul to be yanked out once Kaelyn (no, don't ask – long story) gets her crusade really up and running."

Bishop had the look of a man whose little Bluebird of Happiness just flew towards him but paused long enough only to crap on his head before merrily continuing on it's way.

"Sorry," Gann shrugged and lifted his drink.

The only answer Bishop gave was a quiet "Thud!" as his forehead connected with the table in front of him. Off to the side, the hagspawn could almost _hear_ the question in Casavir's stare.

"Oh, you're off the hook, I think. Rocks crushed your back or something, nice and clean."

A huge sigh of relief burst out of paladin's chest. He'll still get yanked into the same nightmares as before but at least, he seemed free of having to go through the Expansion follow-ups as well. Unlike Bishop there. He could almost feel sorry for the ranger at that moment.

Almost.

"There, there," Aarin said soothingly, patting the shuddering ranger's back. "At least you'll have Gann here to share the burden from time to time."

Gann took one look at the ranger and wasn't so sure he actually _wanted to_ but… it's not like he had much choice. In fact, the sole reason he was down here right now was because he wanted to be prepared for what was, sooner or later, most definitely coming to him as well. On the other hand, he mused, his own storyline wasn't half as bad as the others'; in fact, it was actually _good_ with not nearly as much room for mucking it up as the others' had been so all in all, he could consider himself pretty lucky he realized.

"I'll… help if I can," he said slowly to the still-trembling ranger whose hope for salvation just cruelly fluttered out the window. "Oh, and thanks for the tip, by the way."

"What did I say?" the ranger mumbled, his head still firmly stuck to the table.

"If my memory serves me, something along the lines of '_Careful there, buddy – she jumps from man to man like __a__bad case of pox'_" Gann said in a remarkably good imitation of Bishop's drawl.

"I said that? Good. I wish I had said that to myself, too…"


	3. Hard Day's Night

A/N: I just want to thank everyone who helped to write this chapter, whether you knew you were helping me or not. The story within this chapter is based on no particular one, but rather a hyperbolic "What's the worst that could happen?" Well…

* * *

**Hard Day's Night**

**(by Wolf-Kin)**

_Crossroad Keep was generally a fairly peaceful place. Well, when it wasn't under siege. Or when Veedle wasn't doing "additions" and "repairs" or a redo of the entire infrastructure preceded by an all-out destruction of the previous one or any other sundry excuse to keep him and his men on the Keep's payroll. Or when Ammon Jerro wasn't blithely summoning devils __**and**__ demons at the same time and sometimes almost within the same summoning circle, promptly turning the whole Sword Coast region into a miniature version of the Blood Wars. Or anytime Sand and Qara were within a ten mile radius of each other couldn't very well be called 'peaceful' either. Or when Torio joined in, turning whole mess into a bloody three-way civil war._

_Aside from those few minor things and various other unfortunate events, the Keep was peaceful as a monastery. _

_The bells the Keep didn't actually have solemnly tolled twelve times, then promptly vanished from the belltower. With a groan, the former belltower reverted to being the tower of the Nine once its duty of announcing the setting was discharged; the narrator couldn't be buggered to provide a more graceful and original way to explain that it was midnight at the Keep. The guards wandered around the courtyard, silently wondering who set up the stupid pattern of rounds that certainly didn't protect the gate or the walls, but did send them stumbling into one another every ten paces or so. But, as Sir Nevalle was still standing outside the tower of the Nine – and still in the same shirt he'd worn for five days running – they couldn't very well deviate from their courses, and so two or more groups kept pushing and shoving, trying, as often as not, to walk through one another, until someone in one group managed to jostle the someone in the other off to the side, allowing the whole circus to march on._

_Within the Keep, Kana rolled out a bedroll on the floor of the Great Hall – you'd think that Veedle's construction would have provided rooms for the Keep's staff, even if the staff was of the non-existent variety. How meals ended up cooked was anyone's guess, but the guards had learned not to look too closely at Ammon's devil-of-the-minute._

_Except for Kana, however, the first floor of the Keep was completely deserted, and while this was its usual state, in the half-light of the torches and streaks of poetic moonlight beaming directly through the walls, given the lack of windows, it was absolutely eerie…_

"Damn it, Alidove, shut up!"

"What, are you denying that this is _not_ eerie and downright macabre?" the mage hissed back, defending her earlier assessment of the setting.

Torila was silent for a long minute as they turned left down a corridor, skulking for all they were worth, keeping in the shadows that were happily as thick as plum pudding or the Faerûn equivalent. "Yeah, it's creepy," she admitted in a whisper as she studied the hallway before them, then proceeded to count doors and other exits. "Still," she added as she turned left again at the third hallway, "You should be used to it by now."

"_You're_ not," Aildove retorted.

Torila rolled her eyes and refrained from commenting: could _anyone_ ever get used to the absolute lack of logic in these sorts of stories? The philosophers who hung around HQ agreed for once in their bickering lives: No! She hooked another left and changed the subject, "Still, keep quiet! We can't attract attention, you know that!"

"We're not _going_ to!" Aildove argued in a prudent whisper. "See my earlier argument about the eeriness of empty castles when they should be bursting with people – guards and staff and you'd think the companions would be rattling around somewhere…"

"Not when Slut-adin here doesn't need them," Torila reminded her younger partner grimly as she checked around the left corner, then gave the all-clear gesture and moved on. "She's sleeping with poor Casavir, so that's the only one she's paying attention to; the rest get shoved out of the way. Never can tell if they're lucky or not…"

"Um, Torila?" Aildove said over her musings. "We just, ah, turned left four times, and _we're not back where we started_."

_Mages!_ Torila rolled her eyes again. Just try and mess with the space-time continuum around them and they got all twitchy…at least, try and mess around with it _without them_. "What were you expecting in a Sue-fic?" she asked testily. "Logic?"

"But we're not…this isn't familiar…we didn't…why…?!"

"Alidove, really. Stop trying to apply logic before your head hurts."

"My head already hurts…" she grumbled, then looked around. "So…if we're not going around in circles, and we're not finding the Knight-Captain's quarters…What are we accomplishing?"

"We are _trying_ to find the Knight-Captain's quarters before our dear Slut-adin completely corrupts the world," Torila explained patiently. "And since the floorplan of the Keep is all screwed up, we're going to have to stumble across it."

Alidove could accept this reasoning: given that the logical content of these sorts of stories hung around with negative numbers, it wasn't a surprise that important plot-points were just _stumbled_ over. As the agents were within the story and subject to the same rules, QED, they should arrive at the quarters not by any action of their own, but by randomly stumbling across them just when the plot demanded they find them. "But she's sleeping with…" Alidove trailed off, then whimpered at the implication. "I _hate_ bursting in on them when they're in bed," she said miserably as she followed her partner around another corner. "I just _hate_ it."

"Since a good half of all stories end with a sex-scene, you should be used to it by now," Torila pointed out as she peered about the hallway, trying to discern which, if any, door would lead them to the Knight-Captain's bedchambers. "And since the other half _contains_ them – and hurry up: we don't want to be late – you should be used to seeing the miraculous doohickey by now."

Alidove snorted even as she picked up the pace, gray robes flapping around her ankles as she followed Torila blindly around two corners and across one large hall that was _not_ Great Hall. "I don't care about seeing the miraculous doohickey," she clarified testily, "I care about seeing the miraculous doohickey _in_ – _aiee!"_ Her foot plunged _through_ the flagstones, and her arms flailed out as she tried to keep her balance. Unfortunately, the hallway was _just_ an inch narrower than her arm's length. _"Owww…_" Flapping her wounded hand in front of her, she lost what tenuous grip she had on her balance, and with the grace of the Hindenburg keeling over and exploding, fell heavily onto her hip.

"Alidove, would you _please_ try not to broadcast our presence to the _entire_ castle?" Torila hissed as she trotted back. "_Half_ the castle – fine! It's practically in our contract! But even Slut-adin with her big fat goose egg in Listen will hear this!"

"I'm _sorry_!" the mage cried, tugging at the leg that vanished into nothing. "It just _appeared_!"

"That's…not good…" Torila muttered as she knelt and studied the black orifice of the Sue-world that had consumed her partner's leg. "Usually they're already in the world – if one just _appeared_…" she reached down, feeling the ankle until it vanished into whatever dark Plane the philosophers (some of 'em, anyways) said was between worlds, then with a brisk tug like landing a fish, she retrieved the wayward limb.

As Alidove alternately rubbed her ankle and hip, whining all the while, Torila studied the size and shape of the shadowy black hole in the solid stone floor, surprisingly realistic-looking and formed in this world wrapped in cotton candy. Frowning, she pulled out her belt knife and prodded the surface, pulling back to examine the sheen that coated the blade's edge. "Thought so," she muttered, then shifted her grip on the knife and stabbed violently down into the Plothole.

Oily black words the exact consistency of mucus fountained up and splattered all over Alidove. "_Torila!"_ the mage yelped, scurrying backwards crab-like, trying to escape the spreading pool of the ruptured Plothole. "Gods of darkness, do you know how long it takes to launder these robes?"

"No, and you don't either," Torila shot back as she pulled a cheesecloth from her belt and pressed it to the center of the word puddle.

Alidove refused to acknowledge the point, and instead, continued, "Whichever and furthermore, this is the third robe you've ruined this week! And the week's only three days old! I don't ask for much, do I? I _try_ and be useful: I cast anything you need me to cast. I let you lead–"

"Is that a measure of your obedience, or your cowardice?" Torila asked dryly.

"—_I let you lead_," the mage continued stridently, "I laugh at your jokes – though they are really funny – and I'm a cheap wine-drinker when you buy drinks in the Refuge!"

Torila reached over to pat Alidove's shoulder. "I know, I know. But you've got dozens of robes, and they do come clean in the end, and I have it on good authority that you use the _words_ for magical experiments, so _what_ are you whining about?"

Alidove blinked, then gave her head a hard shake. "Dunno…hold it…" she plunged a hand into the inevitable magically expanded pocket, rooting about for whatever it was she wanted. Torila watched with unconcealed amazement as the mage dropped a silver pen onto the floor, followed in rapid succession by various scraps of paper, an empty ink bottle, the wing of a bat, the slightly squashed eye of something amphibious, and a small rubber bouncy ball.

She couldn't help pick up the ball and bounce it a few times while Alidove pulled out a length of colored scarves all tied together like a magician's trope, a small velvet bag that rattled when shook, a carved piece of antler, two skeins of twine and one of thread, a knitting needle (singular: what she did with _one_ needle was anyone's guess), a handful of dried fruit that were covered in lint from their time in the pocket, a golden gyroscope, a blood-stained handkerchief, a broken necklace chain, a small mouse skull, a live mouse that made it's break for freedom as soon as she set it down, and three pairs of fuzzy slippers.

"Found it!" she sang just as Torila got the bouncy ball to bounce off three of the four walls. "And don't play with the bouncy ball – I scribed a Symbol Of Fascination on it. But it only works on simple-minded people like Sues and the Lust objects once the Sues get done with them…Torila?"

"How do you fit all that in your pockets?" the senior partner asked distantly, bouncing the ball off the wall again. Her eyes followed it like a dented Felix cat clock's.

Alidove sighed, patted Torila on the head, and dove back into her pockets. A small mound of assorted trinkets and general junk later, she withdrew her standard-issue dagger, a small-scale match for the sword at Torila's side. Plain brown leather scabbard, wrapped wire hilt, blade of sensible steel, it didn't even shimmer with the power bound up inside it; a blade crafted of pure Logic, it was the preferred weapon of all CPS agents.

She reached out and gave Torila a sharp rap upside the head with the hilt. Her partner's eyes rolled back, then snapped back forward. With admirable reflexes, she snatched the ball out of the air and somehow resisted the urge to bounce it around again. Deliberately, she placed it on top of the pile, and turned back to her partner. "I have to ask: why the bouncy ball?"

"Well, it rebounds nicely, thereby extending it's sphere of influence," Alidove explained as she got to work tucking the junk back into her pockets. "And bouncy balls have an innate affinity for Symbols Of Fascination – as you witnessed. Makes it harder to resist the effects – as you witnessed. And it means that I don't need to waste time or power scribing in lines of repetition: people naturally want to keep bouncing it and bouncing it…" She dribbled the magic bouncy ball twice in demonstration, then put it away and gave Torila another whack upside the head. "_Try_ and focus? What did the plothole say?"

"Yes, yes," Torila waved the details away, pausing a moment to rub the back of her head that, given the number of times she'd been hit in as many minutes, was beginning to bruise. With luck, it wouldn't even be a concussion. She peeled off the cheesecloth from atop the burst plothole, rubbed it on itself, then opened the folds and showed it to the mage: across the center was the word "WHEN?"

Alidove frowned, peering at the word. "When…?" she repeated. "Since it's Slut-adin and Cas, doesn't that mean it _has_ to be after The Wall Scene…?"

"Ah, you'd think." Torila's eyes took on a far-away look, though for a different reason than having a magical object she happened to be vulnerable to bouncing circles around her. Skimming the lines of the story, she said, "See, The Wall Scene is referenced, but, ah, Shandra's apparently got a few lines. And, for that matter, so does Ammon."

Alidove blinked twice, turning the Logicblade in her hands. "But doesn't The Wall Scene have to be right before The Battle Of Doom? And doesn't Shandra _have_ to die?"

"Again, you'd think. I can see someone making a case for The Wall Scene being earlier – if she didn't _also_ reference blowing up the bridges. Same thing with Shandra being dead – you could make a case for it, or her resurrection, but _she doesn't_. Shandra is alive, and the Haven is referenced through Ammon's presence, ergo…"

"The timeline's messed up." Alidove scowled, taking the meddling with the space-time continuum as a personal affront. _Mages_, Torila reminded herself on a sigh.

"Try not to dwell on it," she advised. "What were you looking for in your pockets, anyways?"

"The One Ring of Power – no, wait, I left that on my desk, sorry." When Torila only stared at her, nonplused, it was her turn to sigh through her teeth. "It was a _joke_. I _do_ that sometimes."

"The One Ring is a joke?"

"Sure, haven't you heard of The Hobbit: 'What do I have in my pockets…?"

"What _don't_ you have in your pockets?"

"_Not_ the point." Alidove gave up trying to explain the reference: there was no one more literal-minded than Torila, except, of course, for paladins valiantly fighting against the gazebo menace. "Anyways, I made _this_:" she picked up the cylinder from where she'd set it next to the wall and showed her partner.

Torila turned it over and over in her hands, inspecting the gray material and the insert cut into it, revealing the white interior. One of the short ends was a ridged circle; turning it produced clicks, and the clicks caused the white interior to scroll up, revealing a series of phrases, all equally spaced. She patiently waited for Alidove to explain, watching the mage rock on the balls of her heels out of the corner of her eye, then remembered that mages loved nothing more than being asked to explain their latest physics-warping devise. And so, she asked, "Okay…so what's this?"

"_This_," Alidove said brightly, taking it back from her, "is a Clichegraphy Devise. From 'Cryptography devise'," she explained on an aside. "Except instead of a papyrus scroll around a vial of vinegar, it will tell us if there's a cliché and what it is without our needing to be subjected to it any more than we already are. No more straining and agonizing over bad writing!"

The average mage, Torila had learned, was part mad scientist, part taxidermist, and part traveling salesman. That wasn't even getting in to the part politician and part medical miracle – given what they tended to meddle in and with, the average lifespan of a mage was generally measured in negative numbers. "So how does it work?" she dutifully jumped in on her cue.

"I'm glad you asked that! First, the devise lights up at the presence of a cliché."

"But it hasn't."

Alidove tucked her Logicblade under her arm, somehow without cutting into an artery, wacked the cylinder with the heel of her hand, and it belatedly started to glow with a soft, white light. Smile undiminished, Alidove repeated, "First, it lights up. Then, you hold it like so, one hand on the scrolling-circle, and then you focus on the cliché. _Really_ focus on it, and start turning the circle, like so." Rhythmically, she spun the circle, letting it click before spinning it again. Her eyes were glazed over and distant as she split her attention between whatever it was that made her act like a whiny brat and explaining her ingenious invention. "It works on the principles of intuition and psychic waves," she wrinkled her nose in disgust, but plunged ahead. "When the devise senses the right explanation, it will stop on its own, and you cannot stop turning it until it does…and there we are!"

There was a louder click from the devise, and Alidove demonstrated how she physically could not turn the circle any further. "And voila, we have our answer of… 'Teenage angst and whining'," she read from the insert.

Torila waited a moment to be sure Alidove wasn't about to go off on some strange tangent, then pointed out, "You claimed that this thing would stop us from having to dwell on the clichés, and yet, we have to focus on them to get it to work. How, exactly, is that an improvement?"

Alidove opened her mouth, snapped it shut, and proceeded to chew on her cheek in sheer indignation. "Prototype," she snapped. "Beta version in development. What more do you want?"

"I want the damn thing to work!"

"It does!" She waved the device with the too-long name, still glowing in the presence of the clichés, for proof. "It just needs fine-tuning!"

"You knew what I meant! I want it to work perfectly _without_ having to whack it every third minute!"

"This is the CPS," Alidove pointed out, "Even the best of our equipment doesn't work half the time. That's why we have mages."

_CPS in a nutshell…_Tolira snorted. "And to think you said that without even a smirk," she muttered, then hauled herself to her feet at last, one hand on the hilt of her Logicsword. "Let me know when the beta version is ready for testing, and until then, you get to use the prototype." Just because the thing didn't work correctly didn't mean she was going to completely toss it out. Of course, she wasn't going to get too close to it either; things around CPS agents had a tendency to explode, either by accident or specific design. "Let's go – must be near to the end by now…"

"You'd think…hope…" Alidove amended. She considered the possibility of the story ending soon as Torila moved off down the hallway, and then her voice mournfully came out of the shadows, "That means it _won't_ end, because there is no hope. It's always hopeless."

"Alidove! Try and get that cliché-devise of yours to work again, and confirm the Angst-Angst-Angst! And then snap yourself out of it! Alternately, skip step one and proceed directly to step two!"

"You're one to talk," the mage said as she hurried off after her partner, robes flapping around her ankles, arms full of various supplies – just another mission. "_You_ are getting hit with all the exclamation points!"

Torila cleared her throat. "Pot. Kettle. _Black_."

Alidove opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again when she realized she _had_ no good retort, and did a perfect Irish jig – assuming the dancers in question had no sense of rhythm and had never practiced a tap-step in their life – in frustration. "You know," she whined, "I don't get this kind of flak from anyone else."

"Yeah, I know, I'm a damn good partner."

"_Not_ what I meant," Alidove grumbled…but, in the grand tradition of knowing when to walk away and knowing when to run, continued scurrying after Torila, the walls a blur in her peripheral vision, the floor verily sliding beneath her feet, the hallway stretching into infinity… "Oooooh nooooo…" Even her voice stretched out for miles and miles, unintentionally adding to the eerie atmosphere; it was even a wail of despair. The hallway stretched beneath them, the horizon twisting onto its side so it was hard to tell if they were walking on the floor, a wall, or the ceiling itself. Everything from stones to distances was pulled and distorted even as time slowed, just like someone had cast the relevant spell. There were now dozens of heartbeats to a second, and not just from being rabbit-scared; but as the agents themselves began to stretch, the number of heartbeats quadrupled.

CPS agents usually tried to get the canon characters out before or during this moment when the story or chapter ended, and let the pod-characters the Sue imagined in fill the void left in their wake. Hells, half the time, the canon characters got shunted off to the side _for_ those self-same pod characters. Philosophers were hard at work – if it could be called that – figuring out why Sues would prefer their own twisted idea of the characters over the real character. So far, they hadn't had any success at all, much to the group's mutual delight.

But now, the agents were nowhere near completing their mission and were caught in the suspended animation of the Story End, the moment when the chapter ended and the story stopped dead in its tracks for a long moment. Then, of course, Expectations would jump in, making the switch from words to imagination, and the world continued on its own, fully sustained by the Sue. Of course, the Sue's presence defined the world, and the illogic of the world would be interesting to witness – in the horrid, terrifying, 'get me out of here' kind of way.

Torila wrenched herself to one side, throwing herself down a conveniently-placed corridor, and the world righted itself, snapped back into normal time and space. "Damn. Damn damn _damn_!" She slammed the heel of her hand against the wall with a meaty _smack_, then hissed in pain; she'd forgotten that stone tended to be _hard_. "Cursed be the Balance!"

"You have a _very_ interesting religion, Torila…" Alidove said from the flagstone next to her. "I mean, everyone does, really, but you take everything from everywhere with no regard for how it all fits together. And somehow, it all works because you _make_ it work."

"Alidove, now is _not_ the time to explore your future as a Philosopher of comparative religions," Torila grumbled, reaching a hand down to pull her back to her feet; with so many fascinating things to learn and energies to meddle in, most mages tended to skimp on the fine art of balancing. "See that door?" she jerked her thumb back at it.

Alidove craned her neck to see over her taller partner's shoulder. "Yeah, real…ornate…oh, _gods and demons of Darkness!_"

"Well, we found it. Stumbled across it just like I said." Torila turned to stare at the door to the Knight-Captain's quarters, shoving her hands into her pockets with a scowl. "But we _didn't_ find it in time."

"I felt the Story End, trust me," Alidove said dryly. "Wait…" she frowned, running a hand through her auburn hair…or at least getting her fingers tangled in the bun. "I thought the briefing said this was a one-shot. Hang on…" her hand stayed for her pocket.

Her wrist was seized in a firm grip by her partner. "I'll believe you _without_ a mound of proof. Why do you ask?"

Flicking her arm, Alidove freed her hand from Torila's. "Well, the Story End is different when it's just a temporary pause between chapters – when it's just the one chapter, and nothing after, it's, ah, shorter. Expectations kick in sooner, since they've had the whole chapter to prepare. If it's a chapter of a story that has an update planned, there's always that extended wait to see if it's going to be updated in the next few seconds, then a scramble to fill the void."

"Um…right." Torila had understood about one word in three, which was about par for talking to a mage. Or, for that matter, a philosopher, and hells forefend Alidove ever seriously got into _that_ line of thinking. "So…the point being…?"

"Inquiry: if this was supposed to be a one-shot – that is, a single chapter – why, exactly, was the multi-chaptered Story End present?"

Alidove, for all that she was a mage, was pretty damn smart. Torila rewarded her with a smile. "Good question. If we can consider this an un-updated multichapter rather than a one-shot, maybe things aren't as sticky as they seem…"

"…or maybe they're worse…" Alidove whispered, eyes distant as she stared at the narrative of the story.

"What? If we can legitimately grab 'em out of the story without worrying about Slut-adin trying to…"

"No, not that." Alidove's voice was still distant and horrified – even for a CPS agent, who tried not to boast about all the horrors they'd seen and were now immune to in case Narrative Irony decided to take them up on their challenge. "It's, um…it's an Author's Note. She – you know it has to be a she, possibly with the same name as her Slut-adin here – she…she promises that 'Bishop will get the paladin'."

"Gods above…I guess the Sue really is part tiefling, part aasimar, and part My Little Pony."

Alidove blinked, startled from whatever horror she was seeing. "She's described as half tiefling, half aasimar, but where…?"

"_Everyone_ rides her."

"Oh." Alidove took a moment to process Torila's smirk, and then her eyes widened. "_Oh!_ Oh, um…yes. That is…um. Yes. Where was I?"

"Something about business as usual for Sue fics," Torila waved her hand in a circular gesture as she stalked over to the door and tried the knob: locked, as she'd expected. "Got a set of master keys in that infinite pocket of yours?"

"Um, no, and, it's, ah, _not_ business as usual, actually."

Something in Alidove's voice – probably the continued horror, but bets also ran hard on the fact that she only got this inarticulate around very bad smut – had Torila pausing in her tracks, still facing the door; even as she studied it, her mind raced through the implications of Alidove's statement. She didn't like what she came up with. "Explain," she said tersely.

"Um…right. You know that the resting state of a story is at canon, right?"

"Thank all gods great and small, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"Well…" Alidove rubbed the back of her neck. "If, you know, something isn't _said_ or _discussed_ in the story, it's just assumed that canon happened. Like, um, Shandra being dead after the Haven."

"And because she's not, it must be _before_ the Havens: we _know_ the timeline's screwed up."

"It's not the timeline…" Alidove said thinly, voice about an octave higher than usual. "So, um…Slut-adin here's with Casavir," she began in a rush, and barely paused for a breath as she continued. "And she's always been with him. She never mentioned anything about Bishop. Then the Author's Note says that 'Bishop will get the paladin.' Since Slut-adin never talks about him, their…relationship is assumed to be canon – _please_ tell me you know where I'm going with this!"

"Um…" Torila had an inkling, but she prayed to any of her numerous gods that she was wrong. "So, Bishop makes a general ass of himself towards the holy-girl Slut-adin, and…"

"—And has _much more_ dialogue with and regarding the _other_ paladin: Casavir! Even in the Wall of the Faithless in MotB he's still whining about _that_ paladin, but not about the KC, whoever she is. Was. Whatever." Like the start of an avalanche, Alidove was picking up speed, gesturing in vaguely obscene ways to make her various points. "Because Casavir is the de facto canon love interest, _ei incumbit probatio __qui_: a romantic relationship with Bishop must be explicitly established. And _since_ said Slut-adin explicitly doesn't have a relationship with him, _cadit__quaestio_ it is highly unlikely that either Bishop or Slut-adin would care to have 'Bishop get the paladin', wherein the previous 'the paladin' is defined as Slut-adin…"

Torila felt her eyes glazing over, and so spun around to jab a finger under Alidove's nose. "Cut the legal terms and give me the point!"

"Bishop won't get Slut-adin; he'll 'get' the other paladin, Casavir," Alidove blurted out.

A long, heavy silence wandered into the area, decided it was a nice spot, if a little thick with horror, and plopped down. Torila's brain froze. "That's 'get' as in the sexual connotations?" she asked shakily.

"Even _I _know that!"

"Are…are you _sure_?"

Alidove threw up her hands in exasperation. "I just gave you a fully formed legal argument as to why! _Yes_, I am – regrettably – sure! Though I suppose if you want proof, you _are_ right next to the door…"

Curiosity was known for killing both cats and good sense; Torila couldn't help but gingerly lean her ear against a crack in the door…only to yank herself back and do a disgusted shuddering dance, trying to clear her ears of the sounds – and other vocalizations – from all three in the room. Her brain, after considering its options, packed up its bags and fled for the tropics.

"Right," she said with remarkable calm. "We have an Unholy Threesome and Bishop lusting after Casavir, who, in the presence of Slut-adin, becomes brain-dead enough to _let_ Bishop…and to _do_ to Bishop…Okay. No problem. Doesn't change our mission: still have to get them out. While…they're…oh, Christ, why us?"

"You see, that is _exactly_ what I mean about your religions;" different people had different ways of coping with brain-breaking horrors, and Alidove's was to harp on the one subject she could harp on without prompting various disgusting images. "If I didn't know better, I would have said you picked them all up just for the curses…"

"No, the holy objects, actually; great for repelling undead and pod-characters," Torila said distractedly, turning back to the door. She rubbed one hand on the hilt of her sword, the other over the scars on her cheek. "Okay…" she repeated to herself. "Mission's not changed. Let's get this door open. Alidove, got an Open Lock spell?"

The mage rubbed her chin as though she only had one X chromosome. "Well…maybe? If I modify Vime's…"

"I don't want to hear the details!"

Alidove silently edited out such interesting bits of magecraft as creating a spell that wasn't actually in _her_ magic's arsenal and therefore had to be cobbled together out of such spells as telekinesis, the need for something big and flashy to overcome the Sue-Lock, the Holy Wards she wanted to interweave into it to counteract the Sueish influence, and so on, and gave her partner the bottom line. "If you give me a half-hour and Crossroad Keep library to research, then maybe another half-hour to set up, then yes, I have a spell."

Torila hissed through her teeth, turning to pace in front of the door. "Too much time. Under Slut-adin's influence for that long…doesn't bear contemplating. We need the door unlocked _now_, and it's a pity you're not Dor…Dorna," she whispered in sudden realization. The number and wattage of light bulbs blinking on in her brain could light up a small city. "Alidove, communicator!"

"We have a…what?"

"The thingy with the metal and the flippy thing!" In the grand tradition of CPS, much more got done with pantomime and the word 'thing' than with official names. Especially when talking to mages, who reserved their brainpower for remembering the names they gave their various concoctions.

"Oh, right!" Alidove reached into a pocket, and when Torila cringed, rolled her eyes. "It's the _non-magical_ pocket. _Honestly_, Torila…Catch!"

Because Torila was not a mage, she actually did manage to catch the rectangular devise Alidove flipped at her. "You, obviously, never played catch when you were a kid," she muttered as she concentrated on opening the devise and figuring out which of the three buttons to push. The Experimenters who swore it was "idiot-proof" obviously had a different definition of the word "idiot".

"Played what?"

"Never mind…" Explaining such pastimes to Alidove – or mages in general – was absolutely exhausting, and served only to befuddle both parties. She squinted down at the devise, and with great trepidation, pushed a button at random. It beeped, a light blinking on and off, and then a voice crackled up from it. Even having some theoretical experience with the devise, Torila still jumped at the sound, and tentatively raised it up to speak in its general direction. "Dorna. Get me Dorna Trapspringer. From NWN Department. If not there, Forgotten Realms." There was a pause, punctuated by a brief buzzing of protest from whatever demon was inside the box; Torila cut it off. "I don't _care_ about procedures, get me Dorna _now_!"

Alidove inspected her fingernails as who- or whatever it was that connected one devise to another learned the saying about discretion and valor, and got to work getting the annoyed agent what she wanted. In scarcely a minute, the devise beeped again – and Torila almost jumped out of her skin again – and Dorna's sleepy voice crackled up from the communicator. "'S better be good."

"Yeah, sorry, important. We need to get a locked door open."

"Kin grab my gear and be there in a bit…" Dorna's voice trailed off, but not as though she was moving about and gathering everything up; from the Doppler Shift, Alidove figured the dwarf was rolling over and going back to sleep. Possibly burying her head under a pillow as well.

Fortunately, Torila was not so easily deterred, and repeated her request at increasing decibel levels – which she could, after all, afford to do without the slightest fear of attracting attention, due to the Keep generally being deserted and the occupants within the closest room emitting some curious noises themselves – until Dorna finally groaned and said, "Alright, alright! I'll walk you through." There was a long pause, filled with cracklings of static and what sounded like scratching, then Dorna continued, "Alright, which o' you two is better with your hands?"

"I…" Torila debated, then was finally able to admit to herself the relevance of Alidove's tinkering and general magecraft, "I think that would probably be Alidove."

"'Course it is," Dorna said, resigned. "Pass me over." After the communicator changed hands, Alidove holding it with a mite bit more confidence than her partner, Dorna continued, "Right, see the door?"

"Um…the stone thing?"

There was a long silence, and then Dorna said with forced cheerfulness, "Sure, let's go with that. The thing you're trying to get into. See the keyhole?"

"Please tell me I don't have to look through it."

"Nah, not that cruel. Got some kind of thin blade?"

"Got my Logicblade," she touched it for reassurance. "Cut the lock?"

"No, and the Logicblade's no good – you _really_ don't want logic for this. Okay…clichéd, but got a hairpin?"

Alidove reached up and pulled one from out of her hair; not even a wisp of hair escaped from her bun. Her hair had long been terrified into obedience by threats of such magical curses as 'Aussie's Ultra Hold Hair Spray' and 'Suave's All Natural Mousse (Made with herbal essences constituting less than 2 of the final product!)'. "Got one."

"Insert it into the keyhole."

"Should I try and lift the tumblers?" she guessed even as she did so, keeping the door at arm's reach; even so, she could _still_ hear the sounds coming from within. Cringing, she wiggled the hairpin up and down, trying to tell the difference between a tumbler and…whatever else was in a lock. Given that she was three feet from the actual lock, handling the hairpin with the tips of her fingers, it wasn't all that surprising that she couldn't.

"Nah, don't bother. Just leave it sticking in the keyhole."

"Can I back away from it?" Alidove asked, eying the door as though it was going to defy the lock and spring open just to annoy and terrify her.

There was a long, long silence. "Sure. Whatever. You have the standard issue dice?" she continued as Alidove scurried back.

"Yes." Her hand dove into her magical pocket, and she shot a glare towards where Torila was rolling her eyes, and wagged her free elbow at her. "Not a word!"

"I didn't say anything!" her partner protested.

"You were thinking loudly!"

"I was _what_?"

"If you two are going to fight for while, can I go back to sleep?"

"No, we're done," Torila said firmly. "You do whatever you need to do: I'll just be standing here."

Alidove sighed in exasperation, then perked up as she extracted the rattling velvet bag from her pocket. "Got 'em."

"You're going to want the twenty-sided one, and the more colorful it is, the better."

"Really?" Alidove's face fell as she studied the plain blue die with white numbers. "I can cast a spell to change its color…"

"You can change its color, but you can't open a godsforsaken door?" Torila raised her hands in defense against the oncoming barrage of magical theory in explanation. "Never mind, I don't want to know."

"It'll be _fine_, so long as you _have_ one. Colorful ones are lucky is all. Now, roll the dice."

"What, against the door and the hairpin?" Alidove studied the set-up, then carefully pitched the die. It nicked off the hairpin, ricocheted off the door, and came flying back at her face. She ducked, and it bounced into the far corner of the wall.

There was another long silence from Dorna. "You could have rolled it on the floor, but never mind. What did you get?"

"Um…" Alidove dropped to her hands and knees, and scrambled around on the floor, trying to find the errant die; by sheer feat of will, Torila managed to keep from commenting on the 'inherent dignity of mages' and Alidove's need for darker robes that didn't show bloodstains and dust. "I got a…" she craned her neck to see, all her mage training condensing into one lesson: if you don't know what it does, don't touch it…at least not with your bare hands. Using magical wands or other implements was fair game. "Yeah, a fifteen."

"Good!" Dorna sounded pleased. "Now lift the hairpin in the lock a few times, and then try to open the door."

"_A few times?_" Alidove asked nervously as she stood and edged back towards the door without crossing in front of the keyhole; no risk in taking chances as to being exposed to the unlikely possibility that the Slut-adin's influence – or sounds or smells from within – would leak out and contaminate her. Or at least subject her to the sounds and smells and mental images of an Unholy Threesome.

"She's a mage: give her exact instructions," Torila prompted from the sidelines.

"Damn right," Alidove muttered. "Everyone knows that more blotched magic and eaten souls come from mages being lazy and guestimating when they should have just looked up whether the runes needed to be repeated in groups of two or three around the summoning circle."

Dorna made an exasperated noise, like a cross between a snort and a wail of despair. "Twice should be good. Just do it and try the door so I can go back to sleep; I have another double shift in, ah, four hours."

Alidove made a sympathetic noise as she reached out and carefully lifted up the hairpin within the lock, then repeated the motion. "Just that?" she repeated. "I don't need to lift a tumbler or anything?" She had no idea what tumblers were, or how to lift them in the lock – wouldn't that mean that the entire door got splintered to bits, depending on how high the lock was lifted? – but she thought thieves were always lifting tumblers and doing other things with the lock, not just…rolling dice.

As Dorna murmured sleepy confirmation that no, she really shouldn't try to pick a lock if she wasn't actually trained in the art of thievery, Alidove tried the door. "It's still locked."

"Damn," Dorna sighed. "I was afraid of that. Alright, turn the die so that the side with the number 20 is facing up. It'll take a minute."

"Why on earth would it do that?" Alidove wondered aloud as she scurried back to find the errant die in question. But as she attempted to pick up the almost-round die, she found the truth in Dorna's words. It was just a little blob of plastic, but when she closed her fingers around it, it might as well have been made of several pounds of lead, all smooth sides _just_ long enough to make gripping it awkward. She struggled to pick it up, dropping it twice – and she couldn't help but notice that it fell straight back onto the number 15, not even rocking with inertia. And while, as a mage, she routinely told the laws of physics to sit down and shut up, even _she_ knew that that was wrong.

Eventually, she managed to get her fingers beneath a corner and flip it; it rocked onto eleven, until she scowled at it and it obediently snapped back onto twenty. "Try the door again," Dorna prompted, and Alidove reached out to do so. Lift the hairpin twice, then touch the doorknob and…

"Still locked. Now what?"

"Sorry, that's all I can do for you," Dorna said with only a hint of regret. "If a twenty didn't do it, you're not going to be able to. I can get my gear together if you _really_ want…"

Torila leapt across to grab the communicator, wrestling it out of Alidove's sweaty palms – not that Alidove gave her much trouble in the matter. "No, no, that's fine. We'll figure something else. Thanks." The last was said as Dorna muttered something to the lines of 'don't mention it' in the tone of 'please buzz off', and probably shoving her communicator under one pillow while she buried her head under another.

Torila turned off the communicator and handed it back to her partner for safekeeping in either magical or normal pocket, lifting up a hand to absently pinch the bridge of her nose. She wandered back over to the door, standing before it. "All that effort…" she muttered to herself. Alidove scooted back and began examining the walls to either side of the door with great interest in the composition of the stones; when Torila got contemplative, it was best to just to ignore her and forget anything she might say aloud. It was for the best; she always loudly denied such pensive bouts anyways.

Personally, Alidove figured Torila was entitled this time around: they were face to face with one of the worst cases in the history of CPS – the canon characters were _just_ close enough to their actual characterization to prevent pod-characters from usurping their place, while still being so wildly away from their actual characterization it literally broke any sane mind within a twenty-mile radius.

Not only was it bad, but they were physically blocked from being able to _do_ anything about it. Driven by duty and the promise of pay to try and rescue the characters, unable to do so…the dichotomy was analogous to slamming oneself against a wall on the off-chance that the molecules would one day be in just the right location to walk straight through, but until then, it bloody hurt! And, of course, there was the distinct possibility of getting a concussion for their trouble, in which case they were best left alone to pick up the broken pieces of their minds and try and superglue them back together.

So, as Torila mumbled about the Sue's increasing influence and how they were failing their mission and the CPS's mission statement in general, Alidove counted what kinds of rocks made up the wall. "Gray", of course, was the only descriptor given, but it was really amazing what the story would come up with to fit: there were chunks of pale basalt, of course, and some dirty limestone, and she _thought_ she saw a square flag of quartz trying to blend in with its neighbors.

But when Torila leaned her forehead against the wall, she really had to cut in mildly, eyes still on the wall, "Don't _literally_ beat your head against it: it's hard enough even _without_ wards…"

There was a long, still silence, and she assumed Torila was just having her fit without the regrettable beating against the wall. But then Torila lifted her head, fixing her eyes on Alidove, and the mage could see something bright and hot turning away behind her dark eyes. "Wards?" she asked pleasantly.

Alidove glanced over at her. "Oh, sure, you know, wards against fire or to strengthen the wall in case of siege engines, or to contain magical explosions from basement labs, that sort of thing."

"I _know_ what wards are," Torila said, and before Alidove could demand to know why she'd asked if she already _knew_, continued, "What do you _mean_, 'even without wards'?"

"Um, Torila? You haven't been bouncing the Symbol of Fascination, have you?" Alidove asked. "Because you just asked what 'without wards' meant. It means the walls haven't been warded," she said gently. "Do you think we should plea insanity and pass this off to another team, or…?"

Torila waved the suggestion away. "These walls haven't been warded?" she asked, eyes still bright with madness or its close kin.

"That's what I _just said_, yes – if you're having trouble remembering _that_…"

"Alidove, quiet." There was a smile on her lips now, and there seemed to be the scent of electricity about her, a renewed energy that manifested itself in a surge forward to grab the mage by the upper arm. "_They aren't warded_?" She didn't even wait for an answer as she spun Alidove around in a circular, half-drunken dance. "Oh, Tyr's right buttock, _the walls aren't warded_!"

"Torila, that's something _I_ should be excited about," Alidove explained through clenched teeth. "Really, let's come along and lie down for a bit now. I'm sure Kana will love the company for a change…unless, of course, she's been infected with the same thing that's bitten Casavir and Bishop, in which case, we'd better just head straight back—"

"We're not giving up." Torila somehow defied the law of inertia and stopped dead in her tracks, eyes still bright but serious now. It was a very interesting combination only rarely seen in agents – usually there was a distinct lack of seriousness when someone went mad. Specifically, when an agent snapped, things exploded, and the agent was there muttering 'prettyprettypretty' with the book of matches in one hand and gunpowder stains on her fingers.

"Torila, we can't get the door open!" Since her partner seemed to be forgetting the most basic of facts, Alidove started searching her brain for a basic charm to break whatever enchantment Torila had failed to resist.

There was that smile again, the one that was at least one part madness – the mind not only long gone but had courteously left a bottle of 100 proof whiskey as a going-away present – and one part sheer, raw brilliance that put the average star to shame. It was incredible to behold; terrifying, she thought, and just a little thrilling – or more than a little. And because of the combination, it inspired awe and curiosity, so that the viewer would cheerfully wander after the wielder as if under a standard Charm spell, just waiting to see what would happen next.

"We can't get the door open," Torila agreed, much too pleasantly. "But I think we can get the _wall_ open."

"The…" Alidove's agile mage brain clicked straight through the implications to the end product, and then she began to grin a perfect match for Torila's. And when _two_ agents were pushed beyond the limits of their sanity, pushed through insanity until they came out at the horrible state _beyond_…well, not only did things tend to explode, they tended to do so in a very large, showy manner.

**_& & &_**

Water dripped down from stalactites, echoing in the narrow, twisting caves. The vein of ore that ran along the passage glittered faintly in the torchlight, pillars of it supporting the low ceiling, gouged in places from picks and claws. The smell of troll – living and dead – was almost overpowering in the narrow tunnels. Only Khelgar was anywhere close to 'at ease' in these caves: Elanee frowned and muttered about the lack of nature, Neeshka complained as to the smell, and Qara just looked for something to explode.

But for all its dubious charms, this troll caves in the Sword Mountains near Old Owl Well had an undeniable sense of _reality_ woven through ever rock and plundered crate. Perhaps, at times, this place – this world in general – was not the most logical or even the brightest of worlds; in places the ribbing of the world, looking rather like very oddly spelled words more to the lines of mathematical equations than sentences, was perfectly visible. But it was for others to take these bare bones and elaborate, expand, gild, spike in logic where logic was needed, and otherwise modify the world – hopefully for the better.

All this had to do was _be_.

This was Canon.

These was the _real_ troll caves, but reality NWN Canon wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Even here, a fairly straightforward place, the shadowy alcoves had a tendency to fade away into…_nothing_. And nothingness was a very scary thing, especially seeing _something_ turn into _nothing_, which was beyond even blackness. This was at last half the reason why various characters froze dead in their tracks and refused to move when they got shunted into those tight corners. (The other half reason was related to the very nature _of_ reality, and tended to make eyes glaze over.)

But what passed for reality in this Canon had to be flexible: after all, it had to content with an infinite range of possibilities for a main character. To say nothing of creators who were by no means omnipotent, and in fact, seemed to consider "logic" to be a luxury in a setting, not a necessity. However, it was Canon, and so it made do the best it could.

While Khelgar tugged on his beard and Qara fussed with the dirt on the hem of her robes, the spot reserved for the character who would become the Knight-Captain was filled with a dark shadowy substance, just a little more solid than the enemy shadows spawned by Garius and the King of Shadows. There was only the faintest hint of a face – no nose, no ears, only slight indents to indicate it had eye sockets at all – and not even a suggestion of _gender_. The Knight-Captain of Canon was somehow both male and female, a pure fighter and a pure mage and ridiculously multi-classed, sarcastic and stubborn and submissive and mild, Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, True Neutral, all condensed into one. There was no one "right way" for it, and so, it was all ways.

But because this was so – because of the looseness of reality – Canon was not a very _restful_ or _stable_ place for normal people to hang around in. All the various options were, of course, present, and that meant one overlaid another like many sheets of phyllo dough. It also meant that conversations came out like a mass of unintelligible sound, and were generally repeated, even when it made no logical sense to be repeating them, such as asking a much beloved companion on the very eve of the final battle, after having gone through thick and thin, "Who are you?" The Canon characters were used to it to the point where having _one_ line of dialogue in a conversation seemed very flat; the agents…were usually just glad they didn't meddle around with the source too often.

_Too_ often.

There came a soft sound from deeper within the cave, and the party tensed, fully expecting another pair of trolls to lumber out of the darkness…Instead, a small globe of floating light came bobbing down the tunnel at head-height. It illuminated a very odd scene, and was, in fact, the last hint of anything relatively peaceful for a good several seconds.

First came the scurrying of feet; many feet, and not quite in rhythm at that. The sound inexplicably sent a pang of fear straight through all assembled, bypassing the Logic center of the brain for the instinctive reaction to Clichés housed in a much older, universal part of the brain. In a moment, their Logic center caught up with them, and they realized that in this particular world, they had no need to fear homicidal boxes on too many legs. But what was coming at them, jerking and bobbing in the queer half-light, was little better.

"Gangway! Explosives coming through! One side, one side!"

Two women ran down the tunnel, carrying a battered crate between them, wincing if there was so much a bump in the floor, running as though a separate crate behind them had just exploded. Out of raw self-preservation, the party of Canon characters leapt for the walls, and let the two barrel past them.

"We're really very sorry about this and we know you need the explosives but it's for a really really good cause and there should be enough for you to use!"

"Less talk, more carrying, Alidove! Move it! Explosives! Big explosives! Very dangerous unstable explosives!"

And just like that, the pair was gone, swallowed up in the blackness of the caves, running for the entrance with all the speed and determination of certain coyotes after certain roadrunners. For a long minute, they all stood, staring at the light that slowly grew dimmer and dimmer as it drifted away, until there was nothing but the same darkness that had been in the cave since time immemorial. "Wha' was _that_?" Khelgar asked at last.

"I…don't know," the mass of shadowy flesh that was the KC said slowly. There was a long silence from the KC, but given that original speech was a challenge, say nothing of speech with one thread of conversation, it took awhile for it to come up with what it was going to say next. "I don't…think it…matters?"

"Alright…" Khelgar said warily. "Let's just…keep our eyes peeled for trolls an'…stuff. Other stuff."

"I wonder what they meant about there being enough explosives for us?" Qara mused aloud as Canon jerked itself back onto its metaphorical rails and continued onward deeper in the troll caves, and the plotline.

**_& & &_**

It was a well-documented fact that the potential for explosions caused a directly proportionate boost to CPS agent's moral: the sooner the explosion, the happier the agents. This was explained away as an unexpected job perk, benefits, and bonus all rolled into one. Therefore, it was only to be expected that, while carrying a crate of unstable blastglobes, about to use them to blow open _a wall_, both Torila and Alidove were giggling as though they both had a good decade or so knocked off their chronological age.

This time, as they scurried down the Keep's deserted hallways, they made only a cursory effort to stifle their giggles and move silently – granted, they were more concerned with not tripping and thus blowing themselves to Kingdom Come. Even though Torila had it on very good authority that Kingdom Come was a nice place, very mild in the summer, even if the winters were a bit wet for her tastes.

After all, the idea was to blow _the wall_ to Kingdom Come.

They skidded to a halt in front of the Knight-Captain's door, sliding for several feet before they were able to get their feet beneath them. Panting from the run through Alidove's portal into Canon, all the way through the caves, carrying delicate explosives for half the way, they stared at the door for a long minute, catching their breath. In that minute, they heard no less than a round dozen moans, whimpers, various names, and other "sexy" noises from all parties within. Fortunately, the presence of explosives helped them keep their tenuous grip on their sanity…such that it was.

"Right…here," Torila nodded at the section of the wall just to the left of the door, and they carefully – _very_ carefully – set it down against the wall. Alidove nudged the top of the crate off to select one of the stable blastglobes, but before she could scurry a theoretically safe distance away, Torila caught her arm. "We should offer a prayer, first. Think we'll need all the help we can get." She looked skyward, and could not help but smile as she began, "Oh great Mythbusters, gods of logic and explosions…give us a big boom. Boomdeyada."

"Boomdeyada," Alidove agreed solemnly. "Let's go!"

The pair leapt for the nearby corner, taking what shelter they could against the near wall; at least they were out of the direct path of the explosion. Alidove poked her head around the corner, Torila leaning over her to peer around as well. Wisps of her dark hair drifted down, right into Alidove's eyes: she blew it out of her eyes, only to have it drift back in. Privately promising that she'd place several of her curses and potions on Torila's hair one dark night, she ignored it and very, _very_ carefully set the blastglobe down on the floor.

"Alright…go play with your friends," she whispered, and gave it an encouraging push towards the crate. It rolled straight and true, as bowling balls never did, a whirl of orange smoke inside a fragile glass ball across the gray flagstone floor, bumping across the cracks without even slowing, in defiance of the laws of friction. And Alidove knew that whenever something defied the laws of physics, the end result was never good; she and Torila ducked, covering their heads against the imminent explosion…

The blastglobe rolled right up to the crate, tapping against the wood side, rocked back, and settled. The silence was absolutely deafening.

"THE FREAKIN' THING DIDN'T FREAKIN' EXP…!"

Whether it was Torila's shout that did it, or due to a flaw in the blastglobe that delayed the reaction, she never did find out; Alidove was too busy ducking to analyze. First came the wall of pressure, almost a physical thing that slammed into her and sent what was left of her mind packing by way of concussion. And then, through the bright balls of fire and light that filled the corridor in front of her, obscuring the wall from view, came the sound. Thunder paled before it, and so did the roar of an attacking army; it was Death's voice, echoed dozens of times over by a gross of blastglobes exploding and bringing their brothers and sisters along for the ride.

BOOM. (boom boom boom boom boom…)

It took a long, long minute for her to realize that the exploding was all done; it was just her ears ringing, and her eyes still seeing the aftereffects of the explosions, rather than actual blastglobes going off. The scent of an exploded alchemistical lab filled the corridor, lingering on the multi-colored smoke that hovered above the stones – well, those stones that were left – like some demonic mist. If, of course, demonic mist had streaks of pink in its billows.

And the wall…well, there wasn't a wall anymore. There were a few piles of stones almost reaching to the blackened ceiling in some places, and the door was still standing strong, but the mist hovered like a cheap curtain-door in a very large gaping hole leading into Slut-adin's bordello.

"Right, that _must_ have broken them apart," Torila said grimly, though her eyes still shone with the light of the multiple explosions. "Let's go – weapons to hand, she may get violent."

"Oh, I _hope_ so!" Alidove said, the explosion having taken her mind off the worst bits as well – just as it was supposed to. She stood up, brushed off her robe, and strode after her partner through the thick smoke left from countless formerly-stable stones spontaneously vaporizing with only a little help from the crate of blastglobes. With a few quick steps, she drew up alongside her partner, Logicblade out and ready, a match for Torila's unsheathed Logicsword, and together, they strode through the swirling mists and into what was, in better days, the Knight-Captain's quarters.

There was another of the infamous long silences. Torila made a strangled noise in the back of her throat; Alidove had less of an image to worry about and whimpered outright. Sweaty palms tightened on hilts, nostrils flared, inhaling air – or the combination of clashing auras, sweat, sex, and pink perfume that passed for air in the bedroom. Somehow, impossibly, there was music playing in the background without bards or other troubadours – the Cliché-center of their brains recognized it as "sex music", and then promptly shut down, unable to handle the influx. Logic, after considering its options, booked it: now they would be forced to rely on their blades to have any hope of sanity.

There wasn't much _to_ the room, really – just four (well, three) walls, with a door leading off to the sole privy of the Keep tucked in a corner and a rug of some unidentifiable skin on the floor. The bed took up much of the room; in fact, so much that several historians well disconnected from the scene were spontaneously moved to beat their heads against the nearest wall and mutter things about what passed for home life in the Middle Ages.

It wasn't the historically inaccurate bed with its even less historically accurate pink bedspread that had the agent's eyelids seared away. It was what – _who_ – was on the bed. And it was what _the three of them_ were doing. All. At. Once. Alidove hadn't been aware that such positions were _possible_, especially with two battle-hardened warriors who surely were not as flexible as, say, the average contortionist. At least they now knew how the trio had ignored the explosion: the noises they were making were probably enough to drown it out. And the general self-absorption helped, certainly.

She was well aware that these thoughts chasing themselves around between her ears were the last defense mechanism of a fleeing, panicky brain. _Anything_ to keep from actually processing what she was…

…She _really_ hadn't known that position was possible. And she was quite sure she hadn't _wanted_ to know.

The explosion had momentarily soothed her out of her depression at the literal wall in the middle of the mission, reminded her that there were indeed good things in life…only to have that hope snatched away by the sheer presence of the Unholy Threesome. She whimpered again, louder this time, and almost lost her grip on her Logicblade; it was so horrible she absolutely could not force her eyes closed, and that was the worst part. The void her departed mind had left meant that she absorbed the whole scene, and couldn't find it in herself to react to it; all she could do was stand there, slack-jawed, and whimper.

_Sparkly pink bubbles of virginal imagination welled up and popped, oozing cinnabar pleasure sticks and wet female petals all over the place. Hands were everywhere, and anyone bothering to count them would soon have a headache. Casavir moaned as he thrust deeper and deeper and harder and harder into the Knight-Captain, even though it had long reached the point where it was physically improbable, if not outright impossible. Her walls kept quivering, doing horrible things to the paintings that had once hung neatly at eye-level. "Musk" was everywhere, and because of a distinct lack of description – or at least realistic description in the correct spots – this meant it smelled like someone had stuffed a dead skunk beneath the bed._

_Such things were probably better than what was __**actually**__ occurring, in spite of the distinct lack of tomato juice in the Forgotten Realms._

_Endless grunts and groans of pleasure mixed with one-liners that anybody who ever had some actual sex knows never get really spoken, and further things that were incredibly anachronistic for the rough time period. But, because the description was all about sizes and positions, and not about the actual __**characters**__, bits of semi-correct characterization kept fluttering through the scene, struggling to stay aloft in the sea of pink and groping._

"_Oh, oh, my Casa! Say the three little words to me!"_

_Three little words? "Old Owl Well?" he guessed._

"_No – OH! – the __**other**__ words…!"_

"_Oh, shut up, paladin," Bishop growled against the paladin's rock-hard muscles, velvety tongue lapping the salty sweat as his teeth, white and straight in spite of his rough living, playfully nipped at the nape of his neck._

"_**Me**__?" she demanded, scandalized, before throwing her head back and moaning again, gold-silver hair haloing around her head without tangling __**at all**__._

"_No, the only paladin I actually talk about! I've got nothing to say to __**you**__, but I'll be talking about him even after our untimely deaths…Yeah, yeah like that," he groaned as he fondled two pale globes._

"_Bishop! You're supposed to grope __**my**__ ass!" the female paladin whined._

"_So sure about that?" he smirked as he began to drive his enormous manhood into the tight passage—_

"Oh, for the…" At last, at long last, Torila found her tongue, and her temper: "Bishop! Gitoff him! NOW!"

"Hey, wait, what? Who are you?" Slut-adin demanded, whipping her head around to view the intruders, her sparkly silver-gold blonde hair…not even getting into her eyes as Logic demanded it should. Of course, Logic refused to be associated with this story: it did have its standards. Seeing more people, her thoughts almost visibly turned beneath her rainbow-striped eyes, and she could only come up with one reasonable reason for people to barge into her chambers. "Come to join the party?" she purred.

While most agents were normal humans, the antithesis of most Sues, sometimes, even agents got to be dramatic and sparkly – though at least part of the reason was proximity to a Sue, and thus having the influence rub off. Either way, Torila's eyes absolutely blazed. Her lip twitched into a snarl at the very suggestion, and she took two confident steps into the room, anger buoying her and overriding her general revulsion at the sight. She grabbed Bishop by the shoulder, wrenched him off Casavir, and gave him a meaty smack with the flat of her sword as she tossed him onto the floor, never giving him a second glance; her furious gaze was reserved for Slut-adin. "You, missy," she snarled, "are in _so_ much trouble…"

Bishop's strangled scream as Logic surged through his body, displacing the drug of the Sue's influence, completely covered the next few words of Torila's furious rant. He scrambled back, crablike, away from the bed, unable to do anything but shake his head in wordless horror, forced into rationality only to be roughly tossed beyond it by the memories of the very thing they had saved him from. He managed to back himself into a corner, curled into a fetal ball, and started rocking himself, muttering something about paladins the whole while.

Even as one was having a mental breakdown, the other wasn't very far behind. Casavir looked up from his position on the bed – Alidove really tried not to think about it, even if she couldn't close her eyes or look away – short black hair "sexily" rumpled from, well, _sex_. He took in the scene, and his part in it, and his blue eyes rapidly lost their glazed cast. With a similar strangled cry, he kicked his way free of the bed and shot for his clothes; only when decent did he curl up in a separate corner and cling to his hammer, muttering prayers, punctuated by the curious word "meep".

"Paladin…" Bishop called hoarsely. "Please mercy-kill me. _Please_."

Casavir considered, then fumbled for his belt-knife. "Yes. And then myself…"

"Alidove," Torila snapped without turning her head from Slut-adin, or even breaking the stride of her lecture. Really, it was quite impressive that she managed to add under her breath: "Wuss can't even mercy-kill himself…Needs help with _that_ too…But as for _you_, you little—"

Reminded of her duty, Alidove shook her head, steeled herself, and flew across the room to grab Casavir's wrist before he could hack off something irreparable. "No! There will be no mercy-killing for any of us! ("Except maybe for _you_," Torila growled at Slut-adin.) There's life after this! …I hope…" Fixed by skeptical stares from the two men, she swallowed and tried to infuse confidence into her words, "Look, _logically_ life has to continue after this! You're not _dead_, after all!"

They did not look convinced, and she didn't blame them, not when _she_ could remember just what they were doing as well…She gulped as the memories rose up like bile in the back of her throat: How, exactly, were they supposed to help the tormented lust-objects when they themselves were just as tormented? Her nightmares would consist of seeing those positions for a very long time to come, and she could even _smell_ it…

"…making Crossroad Keep into a _whorehouse_, _literally_ having them both at once…" Torila's voice snapped her from the memories – this time – and she couldn't help but glance over her shoulder to see why the so-called Knight-Captain was making the same noise Casavir had been making. Which each word, Torila tapped the tip of her sword against the girl's – she couldn't have been older than nineteen – collarbone. While Slut-adin hardly looked intimidated by the plain steel sword inches away from her throat, and was in fact, more put out that the sex had stopped, Torila had ulterior motives. With each application of the Logicsword, Logic surged forth, and the world shifted itself to accommodate the influx, like an old, toothless dragon grumbling as it was poked by various idiot adventurers…right before it completely destroyed them, but that was beside the point.

The very first thing that happened – after the requisite scar appeared on Slut-adin's chest, having been mysteriously absent from "her perfect bosom" – was the renewal, and indeed, reinforcement, of Bishop and Casavir's hatred for each other. And coupled with what they had just been doing, the result was about as explosive as their unstable blastglobes had been.

"There _won't_ be life after this for _him_," Bishop growled, jerking his head at Casavir, automatically groping for his special knife, with the end result being that he actually just groped…Alidove tried not to think about that. "Not after…" his face contorted in disgust. Alidove could sympathize, actually: he'd just been forced to copulate with his worst enemy, and the only thing that could help was the death of said enemy. And then, likely, his own death. (See also: his reaction to Duncan's help.)

"…unholy spawn, and I don't _care_ what you say, it's impossible to be half of each planetouched race!—" There was another groan as the Keep abruptly rearranged its floor plan to accommodate more privies and bedrooms, and though none of them were there to witness, a bunch of baffled peasants suddenly appeared in the middle of the Great Hall, in the Keep's colors of gray and…the color of magic, whatever _that_ was.

"You can try," Casavir growled, hand on his hammer, eyes bright. Alidove understood this, too, actually; he was just as repulsed as Bishop, possibly more so, but he refused to throw the first blow. Once Bishop did, however…Well, their hope was that they'd both end up dead, and that would be the end of it.

A dozen plans for keeping them alive darted into Alidove's mind like colorful hummingbirds, only to dart out almost in the same second – undoubtedly repelled by what they found within. As more Logic surged into the world, causing the ceiling to groan and shudder, sagging from a distinct lack of support along one side, and the door vanish with a poof of smoke, vaporizing along with the rest of the wall at last, as Bishop and Casavir – Bishop still naked – went into fighting stances, she tried to think. "Thinking", however, meant that she first had to wade through the mass of unprocessed images from earlier, before she could get to the new stuff.

Even as most of her brain seized up, a small section – probably the same part that had once convinced the rest of her that joining the CPS was a very good idea – grabbed the first reasonable plan it could come up with, and hung on for dear life. Without any thoughts entering into the equation, one hand plunged into her magical pocket, and she shouted above Torila's continued lecture, "LOOKIT THE BOUNCY BALL!"

She sent the Symbol of Fascination bouncing high, and had just enough time to appreciate the fact that it worked perfectly; Bishop and Casavir relaxed, eyes following the bouncy ball. And then the ball was falling, and hitting on the floor, and rebounding straight up…and it was _so_ pretty, wasn't it, so pure, and you could _count_ on it to bounce down and up, and there was no longer any room in her mind for bad slash, or bad sex, or her partner still yelling at Slut-adin, or the addition of logic into the story with rough effects. There was only the swirled colors and the gently glowing gold symbol, growing in size and shrinking as it rose up and down, dominating her sight…

**_& & &_**

Torila briskly rubbed a towel over her hair, and tossed it into a handy corner as she turned left and kept on striding, mind focused on one thing and one thing alone, and that was getting to the Refuge. She raised a hand to touch the tender spot on her scalp, where Alidove had jarred out of her from her first disaster encounter with the Symbol of Fascination; for all that it _still_ hurt, she was somewhat thankful. Getting hit there _twice_ because of the Symbol of Fascination had giving her a temporary resistance to that particular little item, due to very strong negative reinforcement and the mind knowing what was best for it.

Still, it had almost sucked her in when she went to collect it, though that could have been more due to the fact that her hands were very full collecting the men and Alidove, along with opening a portal – literally. The CPS's portals, their door-between-worlds…were actual doors with hinges and doorknobs. Whoever had created them had either been drunk, tired, or had a sick sense of humor. Possibly all three: this _was_ the CPS. Anyway, they were easy enough to summon, but the doorknob never seemed to want to turn for her, especially with a train of Fascinated people standing in a neat line behind her.

Luckily, Fascination was something that the clerics could clear up with a snap of their fingers, and then all four had bolted for the showers to try and wash off the scent, and possibly their eyes. She'd let Alidove go first – she had to file various pieces of paperwork, including explaining why a bunch of newly-made servants came across the scene in the Knight-Captain's bedroom, with three Fascinated people, one ranting agent, and one very naked Knight-Captain that was losing more and more of her sparkle as logic verily _flooded_ the story.

Torila couldn't help but grin as she pulled open the door to the Refuge; she'd left Slut-adin with a very, very bad rash due to conflicting auras, and it was indeed possible to Smite oneself.

But then the heavy sent of alcohol almost got her drunk through osmosis alone. The shower had helped loosen her, and lose the memories of the mission, and alcohol would finish the job. She turned her steps towards one of the larger tables, where Casavir and Bishop were drinking…well, not _together_, really, but were rather just stacking their empty mugs on the same table. Alidove was there too, half-bent over the table, clutching a bottle of expensive white wine with one hand, resting it against her forehead.

She reached them just in time to see Bishop sway in his chair, and keel over: Casavir grunted something the lines of "lightweight", and poured himself another measure of whatever was in the bottle in the center of the table. Probably something that could remove his stomach lining, from the consistency: figuring it for a good idea, she ordered a Grave Robber from the "bartender" on duty, and swung into Bishop's vacant chair, kicking the ranger's feet out of the way. She was just grateful someone had somewhere found clothing for him.

"So, Alidove…"

The mage barely raised her eyes, whimpering. "It doesn't go away. The alcohol doesn't make the images go 'way. I feel _sick_…" Very helpfully, Casavir reached over and shoved her head between her knees, narrowly missing clipping her forehead on the table. "'Fank you…"

Torila blinked. "Wow. That bad?"

"You were there!" she complained from beneath the table. "I'm just gonna bounce the Symbol of Fascination 'gain, 'cept it don't work 'cause I made it. I think. Or I'm resistant to magic. Dunno…"

"Is she drunk?" Torila whispered to Casavir.

He blinked. "I don't see how: she hasn't drunk anything yet."

Torila lifted her eyes up to the battered ceiling, asked various gods for patience, and cleared her throat. "You don't want to spend your leave Fascinated, do you?"

Alidove tried to sit up, forgot she was under the table, and clunked her head twice before she managed to drag her head above the table level. "Leave? We gots leave?" she asked, hope in her eyes.

"If you stop talking like Deekin, then yes, we have leave for pain and suffering. One week."

Hope blossomed, made her face radiant instead of haggard. "Leave," she said slowly, tasting the word on her tongue. "Wow. We've never gotten leave before…"

Torila shrugged. "The fandom's never hit rock bottom before," she pointed out, taking a sip of her black, fizzing Grave Robber.

Alidove waved off the idea, and hauled herself up from the floor; her robes were now stained beyond all hope of recovery, and Torila thought she saw _something_ eating through the fabric around the hems…but there wasn't much point in telling Alidove when her partner was like this.

The mage grabbed her bottle of wine, popped the cork, and slugged back a mouthful, straight from the bottle. "Wee…I think I'm drunk…"

Casavir raised his head and an eyebrow from where he'd been silently brooding his drink. Torila nodded with a wince. "Goes _straight_ to her head, yes. And yes, it's somewhat pathetic." She glanced around to be sure that Alidove wasn't paying attention, then confided, "She's a bang-up partner, no doubt, but she has no head for alcohol. Alidove," she sang as the mage started to do a vague mimicry of a dance that involved turning in place with the bottle still clutched in her hand, "let's go lie down now. Since you're drunk."

"Yes, drunk," she agreed happily. "I don't think I've ever really been drunk before!"

"I don't think you're drunk _now_, but that's not the point," Torila muttered as she finished off her Grave Robber in a gulp and stacked it with Casavir's. She wandered around the table, carefully stepping over – oops, that was _on_, but at least passed out like that he couldn't feel it – Bishop, and slung a friendly arm around Alidove's thin shoulders. "Come on. Let's lie down and it'll all be better when you wake up."

"Won't I be hungover?"

Alidove's wistful question – _She…__**wants**__ to be hungover?_ – stopped Torila in her tracks a moment, bemused, and then she continued onward. "Sure, you'll be so hungover you can't see straight. But most importantly, you'll have forgotten _all_ about this mess, because it was all just a normal day and a normal mission."

Alidove nodded thoughtfully, thus proving that she was not actually drunk, even though she was probably teetering on the brink. "Slut-adin, Unholy Threesome, blowing up a _wall_…all in a day's work for the CPS!" And the fact that she consciously slurred the letters just made it perfect.

FIN

_A/N: "__Ei incumbit probatio__ qui" - The onus of proving a fact rests upon the man. "__Cadit quaestio__" - The matter admits of no further argument._


End file.
